9.27am:As you doubtless know by now, Osama bin Laden is dead, killed by US special forces during a raid on a heavily fortified villa in the Pakistani town of Abbottabad.

A quick summary of what we have been told so far:

• President Obama authorised the raid. In a statement to the US, he said: "A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties. After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body."

• His body was buried at sea yesterday, "in accordance with Islamic law and traditions".

• Details are beginning to emerge about the compound where Bin Laden was killed. It was built in 2005, had high walls, few windows, and no phones or internet connection in an effort to avoid detection. It was also apparently home to a pair of brothers who served as the al-Qaida leader's couriers. A family living inside matched the profile of Bin Laden's.

• Huge crowds have taken to the streets of New York to celebrate the news

• The New York mayor, Michael Bloomberg, has said he hopes the news will "bring some closure and comfort to all those who lost loved ones on September 11, 2001".

• Former President George Bush has described the death a "momentous achievement" which marks "a victory for America".

• Sarah Palin has described the death as "a testament to the hard work and dedication of these brave Americans who relentlessly hunted down our enemy".

9.39am:The Vatican has just put out a line saying that Bin Laden will have to answer to God for killing so many people and stirring up religious hatred.This from Reuters:

Spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said that while Christians "do not rejoice" over a death, it serves to remind them of "each person's responsibility before God and men". He added:

"Osama bin Laden, as everyone knows, had the grave responsibility of having spread division and hate among people, causing the deaths of an innumerable number of people and exploiting religion for these purposes."

9.48am:More details emerging on the compound, which appears to have been home to OBL, his family and two brothers, one of whom served as the al-Qaida chief's most trusted courier.

"When we saw the compound where the brothers lived, we were shocked by what we saw: an extraordinarily unique compound," a senior administration official said.

"The bottom line of our collection and our analysis was that we had high confidence that the compound harbored a high-value terrorist target. The experts who worked this issue for years assessed that there was a strong probability that the terrorist who was hiding there was Osama bin Laden," another administration official said.

9.53am:Some facts and figures on the building that was home to the most wanted man on the planet:

• The home is in Abbotabad, a town about 35 miles (60 km) north of Islamabad, which is relatively affluent and home to many retired members of Pakistan's military.

• The building — about eight times the size of other nearby houses — sat on a large plot of land that was relatively secluded when it was built in 2005. When it was constructed, it was on the outskirts of Abbotabad's centre, at the end of a dirt road, but some other homes have been built nearby in the six years since it went up.

• Massive security measures included 12- to 18-foot (3.6 metres to 5.5 metres) outer walls topped with barbed wire and internal walls that sectioned off different parts of the compound.

• Few windows of the three-story home faced the outside of the compound, and a terrace had a seven-foot (2.1 metre) privacy wall.

• Despite being valued at $1m, the lair had no telephone or internet connection - for obvious reasons.

"Jihad will not stop because of Sheikh's death, it will continue until we gain victory."

"If it is true then we must thank Allah that America was not able to capture him alive. Else they would be humiliating him like Saddam Hussain. At last he may have find his greatest desire of Shahada."

"Think not of those killed in the way of Allah dead, but alive with the Lord. We consider him a martyr. O Allah, accept the martyrs. And join us by the Lord of the Worlds"

10.15am:As soon as the euphoria and relief die down, people are going to be asking how exactly OBL managed to live undetected in a huge and very distinctive compound in a Pakistani town with a massive military presence. The Times of India is already suggesting that the episode will prove highly embarrassing for the Pakistani government and security services. And that, the paper says, is why some officials are trying to claim Pakistan played a major part in the action — despite Obama's statement that "a small team of Americans carried out the operation".

In a glaring counter-narrative, Pakistani security officials claimed Bin Laden was nailed in a joint operation between CIA and Pakistani forces. "It was carried out on a very precise info that some high-value target is there," one Pakistani official was quoted as saying.

US analysts uniformly suggested this was clearly aimed at ducking charges of the Pakistani military's possible role in hiding bin Laden. ''This is hugely embarrassing for Pakistan,'' was a common refrain on US TV channels throughout the night.

10.27am:Amrullah Saleh, who is the former head of the National Directorate of Security — Afghanistan's equivalent of MI5 — has been letting off steam about the fact that Osama bin Laden managed to hide in plain sight in Pakistan.

10.37am:Richard Norton-Taylor, the Guardian's security editor, has been talking to his British intelligence sources.Here's a taste of what they've been telling him about Bin Laden's death and what it means:

"He was a nominal head, a figurehead, but that's what's importantabout it", said one official. "It is a significant day", said anotherwell-placed official.

Bin Laden's death is unlikely to lead to an assessment that theterror threat level in Britain, already high, should be increased,sources said. A "loner" might take it on him or herself to mount aretaliatory attack but any groups already plotting an attack wereunlikely to change their plans one way or another. This appears to bethe view in security and intelligence circles. "People are planning[attacks] anyway", said one official.

10.41am:The people at the Muslim youth organisation the Ramadhan Foundation have emailed us a press release. This from its chief executive, Mohammed Shafiq:

Osama bin Laden has been responsible for preaching hatred and using terrorism to kill innocent people around the world and it would have been more suitable for him to be captured alive and put of trial in an international court for the crimes he has committed. Victims of terrorism by al-Qaida should have had the chance to see him brought to justice.

Al-Qaida is a murderous organisation that runs totally against Islam, their actions to use terrorism around the world is not sanctioned by our faith, which promotes peace and protecting human life. Every human should be held responsible for their actions in a court of law and Osama Bin Laden is no different.

There will be a need to calm and extra vigilance and that time is now. Despite seeing no justice for the victims in this world as Muslims we believe that now these crimes will be left to Allah to judge.

10.44am:The EU Observer reports that the EU's ambassador to Afghanistan, Vygaudas Usackas, has welcomed the news that Bin Laden has been "finally hunted down" in Abottabad.

"It could be a game changer in boosting the morale and confidence ofthe US and international community that the efforts and sacrifices ofalmost the past 10 years of involvement in Afghanistan and in theregion are not in vain."

The killing, according to Usackas "will inject the regional playerswith confidence to move forward with greater cooperation and steps insupport of peace and reconciliation".

10.49am:AP have a little more on OBL's compound in Abbottabad, which, it points out is less than half a day's drive from the border region with Afghanistan.

Locals said large Landcruisers and other expensive cars were seen driving into the compound, which is in a regular middle-class neighbourhood of dirt covered, litter-strewn roads and small shops. Cabbage and other vegetables are planted in empty plots in the neighbourhood.Salman Riaz, a film actor, said that five months ago he and a crew tried to do some filming next to the house, but were told to stop by two men who came out."They told me that this is haram [forbidden in Islam]," he said.Abbottabad resident Mohammad Haroon Rasheed said the raid happened about 1:15 am local time."I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast," he said. "In the morning when we went out to see what happened, some helicopter wreckage was lying in an open field."Qasim Khan, 18, who lives in a house just across the compound, said he saw two Pakistani men going in and coming out of the house often in the past several years. One of them was relatively a fat man with a beard, he said."I never saw anybody else with the two men but, some kids sometime would accompany them. I never saw any foreigner."

11.10am:The Foreign Office is telling British nationals to "be vigilant and monitor the media" in the wake of OBL's death, warning that it may lead "to an increase in violence and terrorist activity".

The Foreign Secretary has today asked all our Embassies and High Commissions overseas to review their security. We advise British nationals overseas to monitor the media carefully for local reactions, remain vigilant, exercise caution in all public places and avoid demonstrations, large crowds of people and public events.

Doesn't seem to be any specific advice on Pakistan.

11.12am:Jon Boone, our man in Afghanistan, has a line on whether the death of OBL will have a profound impact on US policy towards Afghanistan:

Gerard Russell, a former first secretary at the British Embassy inKabul, currently back in Afghanistan as part of his work at HarvardUniversity, thinks it could.

He tells The Guardian: "The important question is where does thisplace Obama as opposed to Osama? He has an element more freedom todecide what he wants to do. If he wants to draw down moresubstantially this summer I think he probably could – hard to know,but he has more freedom."

However Russell is not sure whether it will improve the odds onserious peace talks getting under way.

"For the Americans it makes it easier to have talks; for the Talibanit doesn't change the situation greatly, other than showing them thereach of the Americans [into safe havens in Pakistan] – that might bevery alarming for the Taliban."

11.16am:My colleague Brian Whitaker has drawn this to our attention. It's an early reaction to the news from The Arabist blog by Issandr El Amrani

A bittersweet moment: he deserved to die, but it took so long to track him down, despite all of the billions spent in intelligence and high-tech defence gear, that by the time he died it seemed almost irrelevant to the wider problems of the region. Also, to think of all the time and lives wasted, and the unnecessary, criminal ventures like the war on Iraq that were justified in the name of fighting Bin Laden. But I'm a believer in revenge, and symbolically this is important for the US, and for the families of the victims of 9/11. Let's hope this might be used as an occasion to turn the page in US foreign policy. Several things do strike you, though. First, outside of Pakistan and the US this won't be much of a big deal — and it probably wouldn't have been either at any point in the last decade, which goes to show how the alarmism about Bin Laden being some kind of popular figure in the Muslim world was misplaced. Secondly, where's Ayman Zawahri? And thirdly, the amount of Pakistani complicity with Bin Laden really seems beyond the pale.

11.19am:Slight change of pace. Abbottabad, according to Wikipedia, is named after General Sir James Abbott, who was a British officer in Colonial India. More here.

11.27am:What does all this mean for al-Qaida and the wider world? One expert on Islamic groups predicts that OBL's death leaves a hole that will be tricky to fill — and that AQ's international power will diminish:

"Bin Laden so far represented the charisma leadership and the symbol for the organisation, whose absence will result in a vacuum that cannot be filled easily," said Mohammad Abu Romman."

However, he expected Bin Laden's assassination to have "minimal repercussions in the Arab street, because the event came in the middle of a spate of pro-democracy and pragmatic Arab uprisings that tangibly weakened the legitimacy of al-Qaeda's thought".

"Therefore, I believe al-Qaeda's activity will be increasingly confined to the Arab countries in future and to become a local player with its role as international player shrinking."

The prominent Riyadh-based Saudi journalist Jamal A Khashoggi — who fought alongside Afghans and other Arabs including Osama Bin Laden in the war against the erstwhile Soviet Union in the 1980s — described Bin Laden's killing as no big news.

"If you ask me, it is no news because I expected this to happen a long time ago," he told Arab News in an exclusive interview.

Khashoggi said the fact that Osama survived for this long after Sept 11, 2001, attacks was the real story. "It was a big failure of US intelligence," he said.

11.32am:Here's a statement from the US embassy in Kabul, courtesy of Jon Boone. Note the sombre and decidedly unjingoistic language:

The Statement by the President of the United States on the death of Osama bin Laden speaks for all Americans.

Afghans have suffered as much as any other nation from the campaign of terror that he and his extremist followers undertook. His victims — Afghan, American and from many other nations — will never be forgotten.

As President Obama said, "Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims."

This victory will not mark the end of our effort against terrorism. America's strong support for the people of Afghanistan will continue as before.

11.35am:What does Nato make of the killing? Here's a statement from the secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen:

I congratulate President Barack Obama and all those who made the operation against Osama Bin Laden possible. This is a significant success for the security of Nato allies and all the nations which have joined us in our efforts to combat the scourge of global terrorism to make the world a safer place for all of us.

Nato made clear that it considered the September 11 attacks on the United States an attack against all allies. We remember the thousands of innocent lives lost to terrorist atrocities in so many of our nations, in Afghanistan, and around the world.

As terrorism continues to pose a direct threat to our security and international stability, international cooperation remains key and Nato is at the heart of that cooperation. Nato Allies and partners will continue their mission to ensure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for extremism, but develops in peace and security. We will continue to stand for the values of freedom, democracy and humanity that Osama Bin Laden wanted to defeat.

11.40am:I'm looking at a (very long) transcript of the White House briefing on the raid. It's bound to be full of good stuff, but one part jumps straight out — and directly contradicts the claims that this was anything other than a purely US operation:

We shared our intelligence on this Bin Laden compound with no other country, including Pakistan. That was for one reason and one reason alone: We believed it was essential to the security of the operation and our personnel. In fact, only a very small group of people inside our own government knew of this operation in advance.

Shortly after the raid, US officials contacted senior Pakistani leaders to brief them on the intent and the results of the raid. We have also contacted a number of our close allies and partners throughout the world.

Those few lines speak volumes about Washington's attitude to Pakistan.

11.47am:Sticking with the "whither al-Qaida?" theme, here's a piece from Gulf News which suggests that the organisation has lost its relevancy in the Middle East.

"There is a new alternative to al-Qaida through democracy which we are witnessing now especially with the Arab Spring revolution," Hussain Shobokshi, a columnist for Al Sharq Al Awsat commented on Monday.

Riyadh Fahad, a Bahraini analyst, said: "Bin Laden has already lost the support he initially had. He did have some backing among some religious Sunnis in the beginning, but all that faded away after his followers carried terrorist attacks against civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

"His followers lost their 'attraction power' after they started calling Muslims who did not embrace their ideology 'traitors'. It was unacceptable to those who were initially fascinated by the new ideology towards a world of dignity and pride before realizing it was a murderous mirage," he said.

11.50am:Here's what Pakistan's foreign ministry has to say about the raid:

In an intelligence driven operation, Osama Bin Laden was killed in the surroundings of Abbotabad in the early hours of this morning. This operation was conducted by the US forces in accordance with declared US policy that Osama bin Laden will be eliminated in a direct action by the US forces, wherever found in the world.

Earlier today, President Obama telephoned President Zardari on the successful US operation which resulted in killing of Osama bin Laden.

Osama bin Ladin's death illustrates the resolve of the international community including Pakistan to fight and eliminate terrorism. It constitutes a major setback to terrorist organisations around the world.

Al-Qaida had declared war on Pakistan. Scores of al-Qaida sponsored terrorist attacks resulted in deaths of thousands of innocent Pakistani men, women and children. Almost, 30,000 Pakistani civilians lost their lives in terrorist attacks in the last few years. More than 5,000 Pakistani security and armed forces officials have been martyred in Pakistan's campaign against al-Qaida, other terrorist organisations and affiliates.

Pakistan has played a significant role in efforts to eliminate terrorism. We have had extremely effective intelligence sharing arrangements with several intelligence agencies including that of the US. We will continue to support international efforts against terrorism.

It is Pakistan's stated policy that it will not allow its soil to be used in terrorist attacks against any country. Pakistan's political leadership, parliament, state institutions and the whole nation are fully united in their resolve to eliminate terrorism.

11.56am:My colleague Esther Addley has come across this arresting little fact from the New York Times: it seems President Obama authorised the raid at about the time that Prince William and Kate Middleton were getting married on Friday. Not earth-shattering, admittedly, but interesting to learn what other epochal events were going on far from Westminster Abbey …

At 8:20 that morning, Mr Obama met with Thomas Donilon, the national security adviser; John O. Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser; and other senior aides in the Diplomatic Room at the White House. The president was traveling to Alabama later that morning to witness the damage from last week's tornadoes. But first he had to sign off on the final plan to send intelligence operatives into the compound where the administration believed that Bin Laden was hiding.

12.00pm:A bit more from that remarkable White House briefing, courtesy of my colleague Mark Tran, who's sifting the transcript. This passage deals with the courier who eventually led the US to Bin Laden himself.

From the time that we first recognised bin Laden as a threat, the CIA gathered leads on individuals in bin Laden's inner circle, including his personal couriers. Detainees in the post-9/11 period flagged for us individuals who may have been providing direct support to Bin Laden and his deputy, Zawahiri, after their escape from Afghanistan.

One courier in particular had our constant attention. Detainees gave us his nom de guerre or his nickname and identified him as both a protégé of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of September 11th, and a trusted assistant of Abu Faraj al-Libbi, the former number three of al Qaeda who was captured in 2005.

Detainees also identified this man as one of the few al Qaeda couriers trusted by bin Laden. They indicated he might be living with and protecting bin Laden. But for years, we were unable to identify his true name or his location.

12.03pm:Hamas has just issued a very strongly-worded statement on the killing of a man it terms "a holy Muslim warrior", Reuters reports.

"We regard this as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood," Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, told reporters. Though he noted doctrinal differences between bin Laden's al-Qaida and Hamas, Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."

12.15pm:Right. It's just gone midday and time for a quick summary on the staggering events of the last few hours:

• Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, has been killed in Pakistan during a raid by US special forces, who launched a helicopter-borne assault on a closely guarded compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles north-east of Islamabad, on Sunday night.

• Bin Laden resisted the attackers and was killed along with three other men in a firefight. The operation lasted 40 minutes. The dead included Bin Laden's most trusted courier, who carried his messages to the outside world, and one of Bin Laden's sons, according to reports.

• His body was buried at sea yesterday, "in accordance with Islamic law and traditions".

• The raid was conducted solely by US forces and the Pakistani government was not informed of the operation until it was over.

• President Obama has made a statement declaring that "justice has been done".• Thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to celebrate Bin Laden's killing.

• The international community has welcomed the news; the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has condemned it and hailed Bin Laden an "Arab holy warrior". • US military bases and embassies around the world have been put on high alert amid fears that al-Qaida might retaliate, and the UK has warned its citizens to "be vigilant".

12.21pm:So where exactly did the world's most wanted man die? Somewhere near the Pakistani Military academy, a Pakistani military centre and the Abbottabad golf club, according to Google maps

"Now Pakistani rulers, President Zardari and the army will be our first targets. America will be our second target," Ehsanullah Ehsan, a spokesman for Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), or Taliban Movement of Pakistan, told Reuters by telephone from an undisclosed location.

"Nothing important had been done after 10 years of Afghanistan's attack and basically we do not know how much the press report is true. But what is apparent is that Americans have used the issue [al-Qaida] as an excuse to step in Afghanistan," the Head of Iranian Parliament National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi told reporters on Monday.

In Washington and New York as in London and Delhi, relief that the world's most wanted man has been killed will be tempered, and may yet be overtaken by deep anger that he was apparently living not in some freezing mountain cave, as many assumed, but freely, undisturbed and untroubled by the authorities, in comfort in a desirable Pakistani neighbourhood.

12.36pm:Declan Walsh has been on the line from Abbottabad, speaking from a couple of hundred of metres from the house where Osama bin Laden was killed. He says it is hard to imagine a less likely place for Osama bin Laden to be cornered and subsequently killed.

"It's an army town, the home of military training. The Pakistani military academy is located here which is where the entire military officer corps is trained. The house where Bin Laden was killed is situated in a relatively well-to-do area. It's a three-storey house in a place really where traders, retired army people and people who work for NGOs live. It's not a place where you expect to find Osama bin Laden and is very very far from the tribal areas where the CIA has been concentrating their drone strikes for the past year or two.

On local reaction, Declan says people were stunned with helicopters flying overhead and explosions going off.

"Some of them are are happy that Osama bin Laden has been captured, but some don't believe it was him … most people find it hard to believe that someone of his stature was hiding in a place like this."

12.49pm:The western-backed Palestinian Authority has given a far warmer welcome to news of Bin Laden's demise than its prospective power-sharing partner, Hamas:

"Getting rid of bin Laden is good for the cause of peace worldwide but what counts is to overcome the discourse and the methods - the violent methods - that were created and encouraged by bin Laden and others in the world," Palestinian Authority spokesman Ghassan Khatib said.

12.54pm:There are reports that a bomb has exploded near a mosque in north-western Pakistan, killing four people. The blast apparently took place in the town of Charsadda, about 53 kilometres west of Abbottabad, the town where Bin Laden was killed. More news as we get it …

12.58pm:Saudi Arabia — where Osama bin Laden was born — has put out a line saying it hopes his death will help the international fight against terrorism and eradicate the "misguided thought" behind it.

"An official source expressed the hope of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that the elimination of the leader of the terrorist al-Qaida organisation would be a step toward supporting international efforts aimed at fighting terrorism," the state news agency said.

Douglas Sidialo, who lost his eyesight in the blast, went to the site after the announcement of Osama bin Laden's death, and said Monday was a day to remember those who have died in terror attacks.

"This is a day of great honor to the survivors and victims of terrorism in the world," Sidialo told AP Television News. "A day to remember those whose lives were changed forever. A day of great relief to us victims and survivors to see that bin Laden has been killed."

1.15pm:Counter-extremism thinktank the Quilliam Foundation has sent over its take on what Bin Laden's death means.

Its analyst Noman Benotman — a former jihadist leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and an associate of bin Laden from 1989 to 2000 — reckons:

Bin Laden's death is a major blow to al-Qaida. His death will seriously hurt the morale of many al-Qaida supporters around the world. However at an operational level Bin Laden's death may have no immediate effect on the group's activities. For the last few years Osama has effectively delegated the organisation and running of the group to others such as Ayman al-Zawahiri, his deputy. More damaging to al-Qaida is that they do not have a charismatic leader who can take Bin Laden's place. Bin Laden's obvious successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is highly intelligent but is also a divisive and unappealing figure who has none of the mass-market appeal of Osama.

1.19pm:News of Bin Laden's death has been well-received in Israel, which is today marking Holocaust Memorial Day, AP reports:

In keeping with tradition, media carried sombre music and numerous tales from the rapidly dwindling number of Holocaust survivors that included some 200,000 elderly Israelis. But the melancholy nature of the day was leavened by news that US forces had killed terror mastermind Osama bin Laden just hours before."This successful operation sends the important message that terror and evil will find no permanent shelter and will eventually be destroyed, just as the Nazis decades before," Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said in a statement.

1.25pm:As predicted, Pakistan's part in all this is coming under fierce scrutiny. In a piece on the New Yorker website, Dexter Filkins describes Pakistan's role as "one of the great unmovable paradoxes of America's war".

He adds:

The fact that Osama was hiding in an urban area raises many obvious questions, like who was taking care of him, and how. Abbottabad is only thirty miles from the Pakistani capital, and it is home to a Pakistani military base, a military academy, and many retired Pakistani officers. Conspiracy theories abound in Pakistan; since 9/11, the most common has been that Bin Laden was being sheltered by the ISI [Pakistan's intelligence agency].

You can be sure of one thing: American officials no longer regard Pakistan's leaders with a great deal of trust, if they ever did.

1.29pm:Reuters is reporting that the US special forces team that raided the compound had orders to kill Bin Laden rather than capture him.Here's a rather stark comment from a US national security official:

"This was a kill operation," he said, making clear there was no desire to try to capture Bin Laden alive in Pakistan.

1.35pm:Jon Boone has this from Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan's top opposition leader:

"It is very worrying that after 10 years this man could only be captured in an operation that was kept secret from the Pakistani intelligence service. Just a few weeks ago the Pakistanis were insisting that the US military and intelligence operations should be stopped in Pakistan and their agents should leave the country."

Jon also points out that Afghanistan's intelligence service has long believed that their Pakistani counterparts were harbouring Bin Laden. Last year, shortly after he was sacked by Hamid Karzai, Amrullah Saleh, the former head of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, claimed that the ISI knew exactly where Bin Laden was hiding.

"Not necessarily they have him in jail court but they know largely where he is," he told the Guardian.

He said Bin Laden had long been a useful pawn for Pakistan to distract US attention away from the threat of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme.

Saleh told the Guardian that the Pakistani state deliberately kept Bin Laden safe so that the west would ignore its nuclear programme.

He said: "They built their nuclear bomb under the very watchful eyes of the west. How did they escape from that danger? By creating another crisis for you.

"If I make an analogy – you have a pain in your finger and pain in your kidney, which one you go first? They created a kidney pain for United States through Bin Laden and Taliban so you give up talking about the pain from the nuclear bomb."

Al-Arabiya TV's website is reporting that Muslim scholars have concerns that the burial of Bin Laden's body at sea is a violation of Islamic law. The Tunisian scholar Ahmed al-Gharbi argued that burial must be on land unless there are exceptional circumstances such as a health hazard posed by a decomposing body to a ship's passengers.

Dr Saud al-Fanisan, the former dean of the Faculty of Sharia law in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, raised similar objections, saying that if a body had to be buried at sea it should be protected from fish.

1.42pm:More from Jon Boone, who's just managed to interview a Taliban fighter in English.

He writes:

We were put in touch with the man — who had what seemed like a British accent but said he was Afghan — by Zabiullah Mujahed, one of the movement's spokesmen.

He said there was still a lot of suspicion among the Taliban about whether the news of Bin Laden's death was true.

But, he added:

"Even if he is dead, I don't think it will make any difference to our fight. He is just one of thousands of fighters, and from a different organisation."

1.45pm:Here's a statement from Liam Fox, the defence secretary, who has ordered "a high level of vigilance" in all UK defence facilities.

"Osama Bin Laden was responsible for the murder of dozens of British citizens around the world, including 66 Britons in his attack on 9/11. His global terror spree led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians from many nationalities and every major religion. Today's news of his death is an important milestone in the struggle againstglobal terrorism. But we must continue to battle against the ideology and the organization of al-Qaida. In view of the possibility of violent attacks from al-Qaida or its sympathizers I have directed my Department to maintain a high level of vigilance in all UK defencefacilities at home and abroad."

Flowers and a message left near Ground Zero, saying: "Thank you US military! Holly & Henry." Photograph: Janine Gibson/guardian.co.uk

1.48pm:The Guardian's Janine Gibson is at Ground Zero in New York. Here are her words from the scene:

I've counted eight live broadcasts and 12 satellite trucks, many more police cars and dozens of officers everywhere, but they are largely giving directions to slow-moving crowds.Though the Metro seller is trying valiantly to rally some cheering — shouting "He's gone", "We got him" or "Bout time folks" — it's quiet.

On their way to work or just passing by to note something, New Yorkers pause, take a picture of the site, or each other, or Matt Lauer from the Today show and move on. No one's talking, they seem just to be marking something.

1.52pm:Following Liam Fox's statement, Richard Norton-Taylor has been speaking to defence officials, who have told him that there is no intelligence warning of attacks on British bases or embassies abroad in retaliation for the killing of Bin Laden.

1.57pm:Reuters reports that the special forces team was a group of Navy Seals, who were dropped into the compound by helicopter with orders to kill Osama bin laden.

2.05pm:A source in Yemen — which is home to al-Qaida in the Arabian peninsula (AQAP) — reports that news of OBL's death has not had quite the impact there that many might have predicted.

Conversations about his death among current opposition protesters are overshadowed by a more relevant discussion about whether or not AQAP actually exists. General opinion from the opposition is that AQAP is a fiction created by the government, disseminated through its media channels and upheld through strict censorship of dissenting opinion. This fiction, they claim, is aimed at securing foreign aid for its so called 'war on terror' which is actually used for silencing the more politically legitimate dissenters that challenge President Saleh's rule. Meanwhile, the government is sure to used Bin Laden's death — and the prospect of a violent response by AQAP — as further ammunition in its media campaign against the opposition movement, and as a means to try to substantiate its role as the legitimate guardian of both national and international security against AQAP — whoever they are.

2.21pm:Ruth Gledhill, the Times' religion correspondent, has written a piece on the burial at sea that's worth a read if you can negotiate the paywall.She points out that OBL was deposited in the sea to stop his grave becoming a shrine.As regards the controversy we mentioned earlier about whether or not such a burial is permitted under Islamic law, she quotes a US blogger:

"There is a stipulation that if it is likely that an enemy may try to dig up the grave or destroy the gravesite, burial at sea — while not ideal — is allowed."

2.27pm:We're due to get a statement from the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in a minute …

2.39pm:More on the embarrassment that all this is causing Pakistan, courtesy of AP.

That Bin Laden could be in Abbottabad unknown to authorities "is a bit amazing" says Hamid Gul, a former Pakistani intelligence chief fiercely critical of America's presence in the region. Aside from the military "there is the local police, the Intelligence Bureau, Military Intelligence, the ISI, they all had a presence there."

Interestingly, it also quotes one Pakistani official as saying that the helicopters carrying the special forces team took off from a Pakistani airbase, suggesting some degree of cooperation in the raid.

It adds:

President Barack Obama said Pakistan had provided some information leading to the raid, [but] did not thank the country in his statement on bin Laden's death.

2.54pm:We've just had a statement from Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, about Bin Laden's death.

Here are the key lines from a very defiant and emotive address:

• "These were not just attacks against America … these were attacks against the whole world," she said, referring to atrocities in London, Bali and Istanbul.

• Innocent people — most of them Muslim — were targeted by proponents of a "violent ideology that holds no value for human life".

• Echoing President Obama's words, she said: "Justice has been served."

• She thanked the US armed forces for "tirelessly and relentlessly" working to bring Bin Laden to justice, hailing a "broad, deep and very impressive effort".

• She said cooperation with Pakistan had helped put pressure on al-Qaida, but added: 'We should not forget that the battle to stop al-Qaida … will not end with the death of Osama bin Laden."

• The US, she said, would continue to "take the fight" to al-Qaida and the Taliban, its message being: "You cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us".

• She said the death of Bin Laden came as the Middle East was undergoing major changes and moving towards a better future.

• "There are some who doubted that this day would ever come," she said. "[But] the fight continues and we will never waver … We rise to the challenge, we persevere and we get things done."

3.10pm:Clinton's language on the Taliban was interesting. The US approach until now has been to decisively weaken the Taliban militarily before entering into negotiations. Is this a moment? (Only a few days ago, the Taliban announced a spring offensive.)

Here's what she said:

"Our message to the Taliban remains the same, but today it may have even greater resonance: you cannot wait us out, you cannot defeat us, but you can make the choice to abandon al-Qaida and participate in a peaceful political process."

3.15pm:How did the US confirm that the man they killed was really Osama bin Laden? According to ABC News, the body was quickly taken away for a DNA test. The DNA was then matched with that of one of his sisters, who died in Boston and whose brain was kept by the United States.

Time for another summary:

• Osama bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida, has been killed in Pakistan during a raid by US Navy Seals, who launched a helicopter-borne assault on a closely guarded compound in Abbottabad, 30 miles north-east of Islamabad, on Sunday night.

• The US secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has given a defiant address, saying: "There are some who doubted that this day would ever come … [But] the fight continues and we will never waver … We rise to the challenge, we persevere and we get things done."

• The US special forces team that raided the compound had orders to kill Bin Laden rather than capture him. "This was a kill operation," said a US national security official.

• Bin Laden resisted the attackers and was killed along with three other men in a firefight. The operation lasted 40 minutes. The dead included Bin Laden's most trusted courier, who carried his messages to the outside world, and one of Bin Laden's sons, according to reports.

• His body was buried at sea yesterday, "in accordance with Islamic law and traditions".

• The raid was conducted solely by US forces and the Pakistani government was not informed of the operation until it was over.• President Obama has made a statement declaring that "justice has been done".• Thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to celebrate Bin Laden's killing.

• US military bases and embassies around the world have been put on high alert amid fears that al-Qaida might retaliate, and the UK has warned its citizens to "be vigilant".

David Cameron, who was informed of the raid by President Obama in a call in the early hours, said it would "bring great relief to people across the world". He said: "It is a great success that he has been found and will no longer be able to pursue his campaign of global terror."

Tony Blair, meanwhile, expressed his "heartfelt gratitude" to Obama and those who carried out the military operation.

3.43pm:In case you missed it, Hillary Clinton's address can be seen here

3.47pm:Pakistan's former military ruler Pervez Musharraf has described Bin Laden's death as a "positive step", but criticised the US for launching the raid within his country's borders. Calling it a victory for the people of Pakistan, Musharraf said he also expected some short-term instability due to acts of revenge.

"It's a very positive step and it will have positive long-term implications," Musharraf told Reuters in Dubai, where he has a home. "Today we won a battle, but the war against terror will continue." Musharraf said, however, that the operation infringed on Pakistan's sovereignty: "It's a violation to have crossed Pakistan's borders."

3.54pm:The decision to bury Bin Laden at sea continues to be the subject of fierce argument, AP reports.

"They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam," said Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti. "If the family does not want him, it's really simple in Islam: You dig up a grave anywhere, even on a remote island, you say the prayers and that's it. Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances, [but] this is not one of them."

But Mohammed Qudah, a professor of Islamic law at the University of Jordan, said burying the Saudi-born Bin Laden at sea was not forbidden if there was nobody to receive the body and provide a Muslim burial. "The land and the sea belong to God, who is able to protect and raise the dead at the end of times for Judgment Day," he said. "It's neither true nor correct to claim that there was nobody in the Muslim world ready to receive Bin Laden's body."

"What was done by the Americans is forbidden by Islam and might provoke some Muslims," said another Islamic scholar from Iraq, Abdul-Sattar al-Janabi, who preaches at Baghdad's famous Abu Hanifa mosque. "It is not acceptable and it is almost a crime to throw the body of a Muslim man into the sea. The body of Bin Laden should have been handed over to his family to look for a country or land to bury him."

Prominent Egyptian Islamic analyst and lawyer Montasser el-Zayat said Bin Laden's sea burial was designed to prevent his grave from becoming a shrine. But an option was an unmarked grave. "They don't want to see him become a symbol, but he is already a symbol in people's hearts."

3.58pm:DNA testing has confirmed the killing of Bin Laden, US officials have announced - AP

4.03pm:According to ABC News, the White House is debating whether or not to release photographs of Bin Laden's body. This from their senior White House correspondent, Jake Tapper:

"There's no doubt it's him," says a US official who has seen the pictures and also reminds us that OBL was 6'4".

The argument for releasing them: to ensure that the public knows and can appreciate that he's dead. There is of course skepticism throughout the world that the US government claim that it killed bin Laden is true.

The argument against releasing the pictures: they're gruesome. He has a massive head wound above his left eye where he took bullet, with brains and blood visible.

In July 2003, the US government released photographs of Saddam Hussein's dead sons Uday and Qusay Hussain but not until after they'd been touched up by a mortician, making them look not quite real.

4.08pm:Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thanks those who killed Bin Laden

4.17pm:A little more on the DNA testing that confirmed the killing of Bin Laden (from Reuters):

Initial DNA results show a "very confident match" to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a US official said on Monday. The test showed "high confirmation" that it was Bin Laden killed in the raid in Pakistan, the official said.

4.34pm:Given that the killing of Bin Laden will prove a field day for conspiracy theorists, the US seems to be doing its utmost to persuade people that the al-Qaida leader really is dead.AP quotes a senior Pentagon official who says that the US used "multiple methods" to positively identify his remains.

• Although the official declined to specify the methods of identification, two Obama aides said DNA evidence confirmed the death and provided a match with 99.9% confidence.

• The US is believed to have collected DNA samples from Bin Laden family members in the years since the 9/11 attacks that triggered the US-led invasion of Afghanistan. It was unclear whether the US also had fingerprints or some other means to identify the body on site.

• US officials also said Bin Laden was identified through "facial recognition" — a reference to technology for mapping unique facial characteristics, but it was not clear exactly how the Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden performed the comparison.

• The body was later taken to an American warship, but the senior Pentagon official declined to say which one or where the ship was situated. It was photographed before being buried at sea, although no images have been released by the Obama administration.

4.40pm:Back to East Africa now, where hundreds of people — most of them Africans — were killed in the 1998 suicide bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In Somalia, the lack of a strong government for two decades has made the nation a haven for foreign jihadists bent on striking the region.

"Kenyans are happy and thank the US people, the Pakistani people and everybody else who managed to kill Osama," the Kenyan prime minister, Raila Odinga, told Reuters. He said that many Kenyans still lived with physical and mental scars from the al-Qaida attack. "Osama's death can only be positive for Kenya, but we need to have a stable government in Somalia," he added. "The loss of its leader may first upset the movement but then it will regroup and continue."

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has described the death of Bin Laden as "a watershed moment in our common global fight against terrorism".

David Cameron, meanwhile, has said the news of the al-Qaida leader's death will be "welcomed right across our country".

He added: "Of course, it does not mark the end of the threat we face from extremist terror. Indeed, we will have to be particularly vigilant in the weeks ahead. But it is, I believe, a massive step forward."

4.48pm:As the jubilation subsides in the US, people are beginning to point the finger towards Islamabad — as predicted.

"I think the Pakistani army and intelligence have a lot of questions to answer given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this facility was actually built for Bin Laden and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army."

4.52pm:The first signs of the Bin Laden bounce appear to be erupting in Washington, where my colleague Richard Adams has spotted people selling t-shirts bearing the freshly-minted legend: "It took Obama to get Osama".

4.58pm:More on the noises from Tehran, courtesy of my colleague Saeed Kamali Dehghan:

"[The] US and their allies have no more excuse to deploy forces in the Middle East under the pretext of fighting terrorism," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted as saying on the website of Iran's English-language Press TV channel.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran believes that campaign against terrorism which served as a pretext for the alien countries to invade the region has now vanished … We hope that the incident will end wars, clashes and the killing of innocent people and lead to the establishment of peace and tranquility in the region."

5.08pm:It seems the US Navy Seals who killed Bin Laden belong to the Naval Special Warfare Development Group, the same outfit that led the failed attempt to rescue the British aid worker Linda Norgrove last year. You can read more about them in this National Journal piece

5.15pm:President Obama has just described today as "a good day for America" as he pays tribute to the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, and the secretary of veterans' affairs, Eric Shinseki.He added: "As commander-in-chief, I could not be prouder of our men and women in uniform."

He's also quoted the familiar stanza from Laurence Binyon's poem For the Fallen:

They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old:Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.At the going down of the sun and in the morningWe will remember them.

5.17pm:AP is snapping that Bin Laden's wife identified him by name during the US raid

5.40pm: Some more now from those comments by Obama, who said that bin Laden's death shows that the US has kept its commitment to seeing that justice is done.

Speaking during a White House ceremony to award the Medal of Honor posthumously to two veterans of the Korean War, he also praised the people gathered spontaneously at the White House and in New York to celebrate bin Laden's death.

He said that this embodied the true spirit and patriotism of America.

5.45pm: Osama bin Laden's former sister-in-law has been speaking about his death, saying that he would have wanted to die "rather than face justice in an American court."

Swiss-born Carmen Binladin told the Associated Press she believed believes that bin Laden had powerful supporters who protected and funded him up until the end.

She says his family in Saudi Arabia will have received the news of his death with "a great sense of sadness."

Binladin separated from Osama's older brother Yeslam more than 20 years ago. In 2004, she published a book titled "Inside the Kingdom" about the nine years she spent living in Saudi Arabia.

The trail that led the CIA to Bin Laden appears to have begun with the arrest of a key lieutenant, Abu Faraj al-Libbi in the northern Pakistani town of Mardan in May 2005.

Detained by the ISI and handed over to the Americans, recently leaked documents prepared for Guantánamo Bay tribunals show that Libbi gave his interrogators the names of a series of couriers.

"One courier in particular had our constant attention," an American official said yesterday. He declined to give that courier's name but said he was a protege of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and a "trusted assistant" of Libbi.

The official added that other unnamed detainees also "identified this man as one of the few couriers trusted by Bin Laden".

This corroboration may well have come from Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, another very senior al-Qaida operative who was arrested in 2007. The official said that the US intelligence community had uncovered the crucial identity of this courier four years ago.

6.40pm: I don't think anyone saw this one coming. The Peruvian President, Alan Garcia, says Pope John Paul II should get credit for the death of Osama bin Laden.

The Associated Press news agency reports that Garcia says of the late pope, who was beatified on Sunday: "His first miracle was to remove from the world the incarnation of evil, the demonic incarnation of crime and hatred, giving us the news that the person who blew up towers and buildings is no longer."

6.50pm: Paul Harris in New York has filed this on the press conference hosted earlier by the city's mayor, Michael Bloomberg:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg spoke at a press conference at the Ground Zero site in lower Manhattan where construction on the new World Trade Centre complex is ongoing and used the opportunity to tout the area's recovery.

"The construction you see here is a rebuke to those who would destroy our freedoms and liberties," the mayor said. "New York's way is ever forward and ever skywards… Osama bin Laden is dead and theWorld Trade Centre site is teeming with new life."

Bloomberg also used the moment to – understandably given his position – rejoice in the news and pay tribute to the dead. "In the dark day that followed September 11 we made a solemn commitment to the dead and to the living that we would bring to justice those responsible for killing more than 2700 hundred innocent people. Yesterday Osama binLaden found that America keeps its commitments," he said.

Bloomberg said that there was no specific new threats to New York today but said he knew the city remained a top target for Islamic militants. "There are no new immediate threats against our city but there is no doubt we remain a top target and the killing of bin Laden will not change that." That was a point backed up by other officials and politicians, including Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, on the podium with Bloomberg who detailed a long list of extra security measures and hinted at many other actions being undertaken secretly.

• is the US justice department planning any investigation into the harbouring of bin Laden?• who owned the land that house was built on?• which wife was he with and where are the surviving dozen or so children?

6.57pm: We're waiting for a White House briefing to begin. In the meantime, the AP has some more detail on the events at bin Laden's compound:

A US official says Osama bin Laden went down firing at the Navy SEALs who stormed his compound. An official familiar with the operation says bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed return fire.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because aspects of the operation remain classified.

The official says two dozen SEALs in night-vision goggles dropped into the high-walled compound in Pakistan by sliding down ropes from Chinook helicopters in the overnight raid.US officials say bin Laden was killed near the end of the 40-minute raid.

The SEALs retrieved bin Laden's body and turned the remaining detainees over to Pakistani authorities.

7.00pm: Obama wanted to 'revitalise' the hunt for bin Laden after taking office, the White House Press Secretary, Jay Carney, has told the briefing.

Carney is in the company of John Brennan, assistant to President Obama on homeland security and counter terrorism.

7.02pm: US special forces went into the operation with the possibility - albeit a "remote" one - that bin Laden would be taken alive, Brennan has told the White House briefing.

"The concern was that bin Laden would oppose any type of capture operation. Indeed he did, there was a fire fight and he was killed."

Brennan adds that the US is looking into how bin Laden was able to hide in Pakistan for so long, and the extent of the support system and "benefactors" he may have enjoyed.

"It's inconceivable that bin Laden did not have a support system," he said.

7.05pm: The killing of bin Laden will have "important reverberations" on al-Qaida, says Brennan,

"We are hoping to bury the rest of al-Qaida along with bin Laden," he adds.

7.08pm: When the operation got underway, the president and others were monitoring it in "real time" from the the US, according to Brennan.

"The minutes passed like days and the president was very concerned about the security of our personnel," he adds.

"It was clearly very tense. A lot of people holding their breath."

7.10pm: The US Seal team took away an amount of "information" from bin Laden's compound, according to Brennan.

Reports that Bin Laden was in the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan some years ago was the last time that the US had "actionable" information about bin Laden's whereabouts.

Obama's decision to authorise the raid which killed bin Laden was one of the "gutsiest" calls of a US president in recent times, adds Brennan.

7.13pm: Bin Laden was engaged in a firefight but Brennan says he doesn't know whether he "got off any rounds".

Asked if he and the president were able to hear shots being fired, Brennan drew laughter from the press pack when he smiled and replied simply: "We were able to monitor the situation in real time"

7.17pm: "There was family at that compound and there was a female in the line of fire who was reportedly used as a shield to shield bin Laden from incoming fire," says Brennan.

Asked if the US will release any photos, he says that the US is looking at what it can share.

"As the same time, we don't want to compromise our ability next time we get the opportunity to get one of these guys and take them off the battlefield," he replied.

The debate is about "the upside and downsides" of releasing further information, such as photos.

7.20pm: The property where bin Laden was hiding out was owned by "two of the individuals who were involved" according to Brennan.

This included the individual who was identified as "a gatekeeper/courier".

A working group of senior officials had been looking at all eventualities, including this one.

Going to another country instead of burying at sea would have exceeded the time period - 24 hours - which Brennan says Islamic law allows for such burials.

"Burials at sea take place on a regular basis. The US military has the ability to ensure that that burial is done and is consistent with Islamic law," he adds.

7.29pm: Asked if the events of the last 48 hours would impact on US-Pakistani relations, Brennan replied: "There is dialogue going on with our counter terrorism counterparts. They are expressing understyanding about why this was done."

"The US - Pakistani relationship goes on a number of different areas. Counter terrorism is one of them. It can be a complicated matter . We don't always agree on some of the things we want to do.

"We look forward to working with our Pakistani counterparts because they are as much, if not more, on the front lines of the battle against terrorism."

7.34pm: Brennan held out the hope that al-Qaida would "begin to start eating itself from within".

He told the White House breifing that bin Laden's likely successor, the egyptian doctor Ayman al-Zawahiri, was not as charismatic and was the subject of criticism within al-Qaida.

7.35pm: The house at the centre of the compound was clearly different to any other house in the area and had "the appearance of a fortress", says Brennan.

The US was aware of indications that the family had tried to remain anonymous but it does raise questions as to why the compound did not come under suspicion, adds Brennan.

7.44pm: Brennan confirmed that the woman who was killed in the raid was believed to have been one of bin Laden's wives.

"She was positioned in a way she was being used as a shield," added the presidential advisor, who earlier named one of the dead as one of bin Laden's sons, Khalid.

After bursts of fire over 40 minutes, 22 people were killed or captured. One of the dead was Osama bin Laden, done in by a double tap -- boom, boom -- to the left side of his face. His body was aboard the choppers that made the trip back.

I'm no military expert but the 'double tap' shooting scenario would appear to contradict accounts elsewhere. The Associated Press quoted a US official today saying that bin Laden was hit by a barrage of carefully aimed return fire.

The National Journal also reports that the 'Seal Team Six' unit involved in the operation are officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group but are known to locals at their home base in Virginia as just 'DevGru':

DevGru belongs to the Joint Special Operations Command, an extraordinary and unusual collection of classified standing task forces and special-missions units.

They report to the president and operate worldwide based on the legal (or extra-legal) premises of classified presidential directives.

Though the general public knows about the special SEALs and their brothers in Delta Force, most JSOC missions never leak.

We only hear about JSOC when something goes bad (a British aid worker is accidentally killed) or when something really big happens (a merchant marine captain is rescued at sea), and even then, the military remains especially sensitive about their existence.

Several dozen JSOC operatives have died in Pakistan over the past several years. Their names are released by the Defense Department in the usual manner, but with a cover story -- generally, they were killed in training accidents in eastern Afghanistan. That's the code.

"Thank God for President Obama," the right wing US broadcaster told listeners today.

Rush Limbaugh. Credit: Stephen Lovekin/Getty

"Ladies and gentlemen, we need to open the program today by congratulating President Obama," Limbaugh (Left) announced at the start of his radio show, in which he credited Obama with the strategy that led to the killing bin Laden.

"President Obama has done something extremely effective, and when he does, this needs to be pointed out."

"President Obama, perhaps the only qualified member in the room to deal with this, insisted on the Special Forces. No one else thought of that…. Not a single intelligence adviser, not a single national security adviser, not a single military adviser came up with the idea of using Seal Team 6 or any Special Forces."

8.15pm: President Barack Obama is inclined toward a "robust reduction" in US troops in Afghanistan this summer, according to the US Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin.

"I believe it was going to be robust in any event," Levin told reporters in a conference call which was reported by Reuters.

Obama's has plans in train to start a drawdown this July of some of the roughly 100,000 US troops in Afghanistan.

But Levin also believed this robustness would be "reinforced by events" - meaning the killing of bin Laden.

8.20pm: Richard Adams in Washington has filed some snap analysis of the briefing earlier by one of President Obama's key advisers:

The White House's homeland security adviser John Brennan stressed two points in his press briefing this afternoon. One was that Barack Obama was intimately involved in the decision making that led to Osama bin Laden's death. The other was that the mission was approached with great caution and diligence, to the extent that the Pakistan authorities were kept in the dark to ensure the mission's success.

In Brennan's telling, Obama exhibited reserves of ability in pushing for the mission, in the absence of unanimity within the president's national security team and with intelligence offering hints but no definitive evidence that bin Laden was present.

"There was nothing that confirmed that bin Laden was at that compound," said Brennan. "When President Obama was faced with the opportunity to act upon this, the president had to evaluate the strength of that information and then made what I believe was one of the most gutsiest calls of any president in recent memory."

It's worth thinking what would have happened if the compound in Abbottabad had proved to be an empty shell: it would have added another failure to the list of bungled attempts to hunt down Bin Laden, with this one resting squarely on Obama's shoulders. No wondersome have compared it to Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to free the US embassy hostages in Tehran.

Earlier, reporters in the press briefing room had been reminded of Obama's vow as a candidate in 2007, when he said that if the US had "actionable intelligence" about targets in Pakistan and the Pakistani government failed to act on it, "we will."

In doing so candidate Obama was attacked by both his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton and his eventual Republican opponent John McCain, with McCain calling Obama's declaration "naive".

Brennan, though, painted a picture of an engaged, multi-tasking president, dealing with tornadoes in Alabama, critical budget negotiations with Republicans as well as the emerging target in Pakistan.

Brennan's account also highlighted the huge effort that had gone into preparations for the raid, right down to the disposal of Osama bin Laden's body, the models built of the Abbottabad compound, and the tenses scenes in the Situation Room as Obama and staff followed the operation, as "minutes passed like days". It was, Brennan said, "probably one of the most anxiety-filled periods of times in the lives of the people assembled here."

8.24pm: A retired Special Forces officer with extensive operational experience has told The Nation that the US special forces involved in the killing of bin Laden are "sort of like Murder, Incorporated."

Col. W. Patrick Lang added: "They're the ace in the hole. If you were a card player, that's your ace that you've got tucked away."

8.29pm: Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian has filed this from Washington DC after chatting with Michael Scheuer, who founded and ran the CIA's dedicated bin Laden unit until it was disbanded by George W Bush:

Osama bin Laden's choice of hideout - in a spacious villa compound - and his seemingly sedentary lifestyle in his final days did not come as a suprise to one of the most seasoned watchers of the al-Qaida leader.

Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1991-199 and the tracking efforts til 2004, said bin Laden, along with other senior al-Qaida figures, had exhibited a tendency to hide themselves in heavily fortified villas in urban settings.

"That whole Hollywood version of him running rock to rock and cave to cave was really nonsense. You are most vulnerable when you are moving . That is when mistakes are made. He has probably led a mostly sendentary life since 9/11 or at least since Tora Bora," Scheuer said in a telephone conversation.

Bin Laden has shown a preference for villas before - and so have other leading al-Qaida figures. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was also run down to a Pakistani garrison town, Rawalpindi, where he was captured in a 2003 joint operation between US and Pakistani forces.

"Bin Laden has made a pattern of living in villas rather than caves, villas with high walls around them in the typical South Asian kind of arrangement," he said. "What this reminded me more of was Rawalpindi when we picked up Khalid Sheikh Mohammed amongst all kinds of military officers. It was the same kind of affair in Abbotobad.

Bin Laden, meanwhile, occupied a similar style villa for some time in the Afghan city of Kandahar in 1998-1999 when the US was seeking him after the bombing of its East African embassies, Scheuer said.

Details released by government officials suggest that bin Laden had been at his Abbotabad hide-out for some time, Scheuer said. "I was surprised by the lack of guard around him. That suggest to me that he was pretty comfortable and safe there in Abbotobad. It certainly means he was comfortable there, and felt that he was safe where he was."

8.35pm: US forces may have had no other option but to kill Osama bin Laden, a UN human rights investigator has told the Associated Press news agency.

"The ideal from a human rights point of view is always to capture and to try, rather than to kill on sight," Heyns said in an email to the AP.

"However, it is not clear from the facts we have so far whether this was indeed possible," he said. "It has to be accepted that in some cases it is not a realistic option."

8.37pm: In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron is chairing a meeting tonight of the government's Cobra emergencies committee.

He spoke earlier by telephone with Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zadari and prime minister Yusuf Raza Gilani and with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

"The Prime Minister made clear in the conversations that Britain would continue to work extremely closely with both Afghanistan and Pakistan to tackle the terrorist threat from al Qaida and from the Taliban," said a No 10 spokesman.

"The Prime Minister also underlined the importance of effective co-operation between Afghanistan and Pakistan against terrorism and extremism."

Has any single individual even come close to costing America that much? Adolph Hitler is probably one of the few candidates, but I'd argue that World War II was a lot less about him than 9/11 was about Osama bin Laden. And who else is even in the running here?

8.48pm: New York City authorities briefly shut down a street in Times Square after investigating a suspicious package which turned out not to be dangerous, Reuters reports.

8.53pm: Declan Walsh, the Guardian's correspondent in Pakistan, has filed from Abbottabad, the quiet military town in the Himalayan foothills where Osama bin Laden lived for many years. He describes the scene outside the mansion where the al-Qaida leader met his demise:

Yesterday the house was partially hidden by a red canvas screen that had been hastily erected by Pakistani soldiers – probably to hide the site where an American helicopter reportedly crashed to the ground in still murky circumstances.

An armed soldier stood guard on the roof, gripping his weapon. Others surged through the surrounding fields, playing hide-and-seek with journalists they sought to keep at bay. "Please, please, leave," begged one young colonel, trying to shoo the Guardian away.

But it was too late: Abbottabad's greatest secret was out. Nobody, of course, had ever seen Bin Laden. "Never in my wildest dreams would I have dreamed he was inside," said one neighbour. But many knew two Pashtun men who owned the house – possibly Bin Laden's trusted courier and his brother who unwittingly led American spies to their quarry last August.

The Pashtuns kept to themselves, people said – burning their own rubbish, sending children to buy food at the shops, attending daily prayers but spurning small talk. Nobody seemed to know their names, or where they came from – some thought Afghanistan, others said Waziristan in the tribal areas.

US intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before his death and expect that tape to surface soon.

It is unclear whether the tape is audio or video, but a US official says that intelligence indicates it is already working its way through al-Qaida's media pipeline. The official said the timing was coincidental and there is no indication he knew U.S. forces were bearing down on him.

A new recording from bin Laden would provide a final word from the beyond grave for a terrorist who taunted the US with recorded propaganda for years. It could also provide fodder to those who insist he is still alive.

It is now clear that the prime minister was not just told in Washington that organisations like Lakshar e Taiba were able to launch attacks on India and Britain from Pakistan. Cameron was also warned that Pakistan was providing a haven for al-Qaida leaders, possibly including Osama bin Laden.

The prime minister would not have been told that bin Laden was living in the comfortable garrison town of Abbottabad 35 miles from Islamabad and less than a mile from the Pakistani military's main training academy. That is because the US authorities did not track bin Laden to the compound until last August, shortly after Cameron's trips to India and Washington, according to the New York Times.

But the US authorities had been familiar with al-Qaida's links to Abbottabad for at least two years. We know this because one of the leaked Guantanamo files published on 25 April by the Guardian which is dated 10 September 2008. This shows that a Guantanamo detainee, who allegedly provided intelligence which led the US authorities to one of bin Laden's couriers, moved his family to Abbottabad in the middle of 2003.

• US intelligence officials believe Osama bin Laden made a propaganda recording shortly before his death and expect that tape to surface soon.It is unclear whether the tape is audio or video, but a US official has said that intelligence indicates it is already working its way through al-Qaida's media pipeline. The official said the timing was coincidental and there is no indication he knew US forces were bearing down on him.

• President Barack Obama has hailed bin Laden's death as a "good day for America," and claimed that the world is now a safer and a better place."Today we are reminded that as a nation there is nothing we can't do", the US president said.However, the US has issued security warnings while CIA Director Leon Panetta said al-Qaida would "almost certainly" try to avenge its figurehead's death.

• Pakistan's government is facing deeply uncomfortable questions in the US and beyond over the presence of bin Laden near a military facility less than two hours from the capital, Islamabad.There have also been angry claims from Afghanistan that its own position has been vindicated.Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, hinted that the Pakistani state itself was complicit in sheltering the terrorist leader, saying Bin Laden had "hidden himself in the military bases of Abbottabad".

• It prevented any grave site emerging as a shrine but muslim clerics have warned that the US decision to bury bin Laden's body at sea may lead to reprisals.Some muslim scholars claimed it had breached sharia law and warned that it may provoke calls for revenge attacks against US targets while others used the sea burial question to doubt whether he was, in fact, dead at all, with doubts fuelled by the absence of photographs of his corpse.

This blog is now being closed, by my colleague in Washington DC, Richard Adams, will be picking coverage up here.